Saturday, June 17, 2017

Reem's bakery in Fruitvale. Mainstreaming Murder

Why is Reem's Bakery in the Oakland Fruitvale neighborhood promoting hate? Why is Reem's glorifying Rasmea Odeh, the confessed killer of 2 young students? Why is a bakery that claims to "connect people across culture" lionizing a murderer who targeted civilians in a grocery store?

Mural of PFLP terrorist Rasmea Odeh at Reems bakery in Fruitvale

Hebrew University students, Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner were best friends, murdered when members of the terror group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine bombed a Jerusalem grocery store in 1969. Nine other people were injured.Rasmea Odeh, a member of the PFLP terror group placed her bomb in a kosher grocery store in Jerusalem for one reason- to target and terrorize Jewish civilians. She was arrested and confessed to the murders after one day in custody. Physical evidence such as bomb making materials were found in Odeh’s home.Guy Wintelir, an observer from the International Red Cross attended the six month long trial and described it as fair. Rasmea was sentenced to life in prison over for her role in the attack.

In 1980, after serving only 10 years of her sentence, Odeh was released in a prisoner exchange She immigrated to the United States in 1995, escaping detection by using a variety of aliases, but was found guilty in 2014 of lying on her immigration papers. She confessed after an appeal and is currently awaiting deportation.

In a 2004 documentary, Rasmea was implicated by her co-conspirator Aisha Odeh which Aisha admitted to participating in the Super Sol attack and named Rasmea as one of her accomplices. She admitted “Rasmea Odeh was more involved than I was [in the grocery store bombing] ... I only got involved during the preparation of explosives. We wanted to place two bombs to blow up consecutively. I suggested to have the second bomb go off five or six minutes after the first bomb so that those who get killed in it would be members of the army and secret service, but it did not explode. They diffused it 20 seconds before it exploded.”In a community devastated by violence, why is Reems bakery glorifying this unrepentant murderer?

It remains unclear how glorifying a murderer builds connections across cultures

For more information on the crimes of Rasmea Odeh:

The Legal Insurrection website provides the most comprehensive coverage of Rasmea Odeh's history, and more importantly, those of her victims and their families.

Kanafani was the spokesperson for the terrorist organization in its early years. Kanafani announced the PFLP’s responsibility for the Lod Airport Massacre of May 1972 and was linked to the airport attackers. The attack killed 26 people."